Commission to Build a Healthier America

Read the Commission's new recommendations to improve America's health »

Much of America’s public policy discussion on improving health has centered on access to and affordability of care. While such steps are critical, an enormous body of evidence tells us that non-medical factors like education, community conditions, and other environmental and socioeconomic factors generally have a much greater impact on health.

New research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) also confirms that the economic, social and physical environment has a large impact on the health of Americans. Read more in the RWJF’s initial report »

In February 2008, RWJF launched the Commission to Build a Healthier America – a national, independent, non-partisan group of leaders with involvement both in and outside the health care field – to provide better opportunities for Americans in every community to grow up and stay healthy. Mark McClellan and Alice Rivlin are co-chairs of the Commission. This Commission will focus on those factors beyond medical care that have an enormous influence on health and will ask what we can do about it. Specifically, the Commission will address the social and economic factors in America that affect a person’s health. Over the course of its 24-month tenure, ending spring 2009, the Commission will:

• Explore and raise awareness of the complex intersection of social, economic, cultural and racial factors that influence health;
• Engage policymakers and thought leaders from business, education, housing, the environment and others fields in a discussion on how best to close the nation’s health gaps; and
• Issue viable and politically feasible recommendations for public- and private-sector solutions to improve health and eliminate health disparities in America

The three objectives of the initiatives are to:

• Increase knowledge and understanding of how factors such as education, the social and physical environment, income and housing can affect health and longevity and how the relationships between these factors create disparities in health among Americans;
• Motivate private- and public-sector efforts to address the problem of health gaps that are created by social and economic factors; and
• Formulate and promote the adoption of private and public policies and interventions to reduce disparities in health across social class, income, and racial and ethnic groups, and thereby improve the health of Americans overall.

For more information about the Commission and its activities, the Commission members, news related to the Commission and related data and reports, please visit www.commissiononhealth.org.

Back to Engelberg Center Projects »